Starting next month, Jews from anywhere in the world may press a button and their family tree will materialize on a video screen along with biographical data on their ancestors. This will be possible when the new Genealogy Center opens at Beth Hatefutsoth, the Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, on the Tel Aviv University campus. For a small fee, Jewish families will be able to record or trace their family histories stored in computers.
According to the museum, any family tree going back at least five generations and with 50 members may be entered into the computer. The computer terminals are capable of displaying colored graphics in two formats: a biographical summary of each family member; and three-generation charts centered on one family member, showing his or her relationship to immediate relatives.
The Genealogy Center owes its existence largely to the efforts of Dr. Douglas Goldman of San Francisco in whose honor it is named. Douglas, in tracing his own family tree, found it included such persons as Levi Strauss who created and sold blue jeans, known as levis, in the American Old West; and Katharine Meyer Graham, publisher of The Washington Post.
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